The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [142]
Now she sat Sigurd in front of the steading with a basin of water and some other vessels, both whole and broken, and Sigurd set about pouring the water back and forth among the vessels. Then Asta went into the steading and carried out all of the skins of the two beds, and laid them on the hillside in the sun. Then she gathered some birch branches and lashed them together with a willow whip and began to beat the skins so that the fleas and lice rose out of them as well as dirt and dust. After that, she took a comb and set about combing the remaining vermin out of Sigurd’s bearskins, and this was something she did four or five times in a summer, more often than most folk, because she was very particular about such things.
As she was engaged in this, Sigurd got up from his play and came over to the furs and began to lie down upon them and roll around on them, laughing merrily, for they were soft and clean and sweet to the skin, and though he was undoing her work, Asta was incapable of wrath at her son, and she merely laughed with him and knelt down and ruffled his hair and put her face close to his and looked at him. His mother’s admiration moved the boy to jump up and begin running back and forth on the flat place in front of the steading, as fast as he could. Then he began to gather small stones and toss them down the hill toward the water, for it was his fixed desire to stand just in front of the steading and throw a stone so that it went into the water, although the strip of hillside was some fifty paces in width. He threw these stones with great intensity of thought, one after the other. Asta went back to her work, and finished combing the skins and began to carry them indoors.
In the shade of the steading was a vat of ewe’s milk from the morning, and beside it a smaller one from the evening before. Asta went over to these and looked at the milk, then gathered some small pieces of driftwood and a clump of sheep’s dung and built a small fire. On this she set a soapstone pot, and into that she poured the night’s milk, letting it heat until she could just barely endure to touch it with her finger. Then she poured it out into the morning’s milk. Now she went into the steading and got a small basin of buttermilk from the butter making of the day before, and poured it into the milk. After this she took Sigurd farther down the slope so that there would be no chance of his coming against the vat of milk or disturbing it in any way. She sat with him on the lower slope, looking across to Brattahlid, and she played with him a game that involved their four hands, where she put one of her hands down upon her leg, and he covered it with one of his, and she covered his, and he put his on top. Then she removed her bottom hand and put it on top, and he did the same, and they did this, taking turns, faster and faster. This was the one game Asta could remember playing as a child, and Sigurd enjoyed it very much and could go very fast without becoming confused. Then Asta got up and returned up the hill and gazed upon the vat of milk, and she put her finger into the mixture so that a hole was made that filled up with whey, and from this she knew that the curds were ready to be cut. She went into the steading and returned with a long blade made from the shoulder bone of a reindeer and sharpened, and she cut the curd four times, not hesitating to remove such pieces as Sigurd had a desire for, for fresh curd was a favorite treat with him. And so she went on with the cheesemaking,